


Hold the Wolf at the Door

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Teeth and Pawprints [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Fusion, Character Death, Gen, Grief, Psychic Bond, Psychic Wolves, Psychic Wolves For Lupercalia, Weird Pack Dynamnics, Wolves Everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3521960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life never gives someone more than they can handle. But they might need help standing up again, and to be pointed in the right direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold the Wolf at the Door

**Author's Note:**

> Better late than never.

They found ~~Private~~ Captain Rogers doing precisely what Wolf had figured he would be up to; trying desperately to get drunk and failing magnificently. His Sister did not blame the man, and so Wolf would not either, even though the scent of the drink made his hackles rise, his whole self wary. Freedom and Liberty lay at his feet, heads resting against each other, but their ears flicked up when he and his Sister entered.  
  
He pressed them his name on instinct, _cigar smoke and singed fur drenched in dirty water_ , and though they did not move in any other way, both the alpha bitches acknowledged him through the over-arching pack-sense. They did not pull him closer.  
  
It ached a bit. Freedom was his sister, in the litter-pack, had been ever since they first met. He and Liberty are less close, but her Brother and Freedom's Brother had been litter-pack, and that makes her his sister too. Still, he did remember how he had been when Kruger left him. He could not blame them.  
  
There were better people to blame. Zola, for instance.  
  
_Zola, strapping down Kruger, strapping him down, pumping molten iron in their blood, “Not the desired result, another failure, the test subjects?” while Kruger screams around the bit and he_ \--  
  
Zola, being interrogated by Bruce and his human-brother Colonel Phillips. Zola, who didn't have a wolf and couldn't hope to withstand them singularly, never mind together. Zola, who would give them the location of Hydra's last, main base. Who would give them General Schmitt and Blitzkrieg both.  
  
Wolf had a hard time waiting, when his prey was within his grasp. But his Sister did not. And it was no test on his patience, when his pack-sister mourned the loss of a close litter-mate, and the fault lay squarely on General Schmitt's shoulders. Wolf had not known human-Barnes very well, with the exception that he was nearly brothers with Captain Rogers, that he was a good shot with a rifle, that he had liked his Sister and respected her, where most did not.  
  
He did not have to know him to like him, and miss him. But he did not miss him like Liberty did; he wasn't sure he had missed Kruger like Liberty missed Barnes. And if he used the aching emptiness of their place in the pack-sense to judge how much she missed her Brother, then Rogers and Freedom were a chasm from which the darkness ate all things that came near it. The sadness rolled off them in waves.  
  
He lingered next to Peggy, near the bar counter of the derelict building. It didn't even have a roof, the damage was that severe, but somehow Captain Rogers had managed to find an unbroken bottle of alcohol within the confines of debris, magically missed by the looters that had ransacked the war-torn city.  
  
“Did you know I can't get drunk?”  
  
“Doctor Erskine thought that might be a side-effect,” Peggy answered honestly, letting her fingertips dance over burnt counter-top. “That your metabolism might burn through the alcohol too fast for it to effect you.”  
  
_He's hurting,_ Peggy told Wolf softly, over the tentative cord that was their own link. Stronger than it had been between him and Kruger, certainly, more _right_ , but baffling to the world at large. A woman with a wolf? A wolf with a Sister? Wolf had his theories, what little they were, but he did not know the words to explain them to Peggy or anybody else.  
  
He called her by name, _cordite beneath jasmine_ , and pressed her the image of the two of them in her quarters, curled up with a bottle of expensive wine as she cried for Erskine and he ached for Kruger. Wolves couldn't get drunk, obviously, but she had drank just enough and let him lean on the fledgling bond between them for the liquor to ease his pain.  
  
He couldn't imagine how raw the three of them were without even that to take the edge off. Perhaps it was best they had walled themselves out of the pack-sense.  
  
_Give him something to do,_ the same way she had given him something to do, after they had mourned for Kruger and Erskine respectively. Work couldn't cure grief, but it could cause a beautiful distraction. Even if _work_ was _convince the Allies_ that the half-drugged wolf then-Private Rogers had brought back wasn't a threat, and that he was bonded to their beautiful Peggy Carter, and that he could be _useful_.  
  
His Sister breathed carefully, watching Rogers, consciously aware of how fragile his state was. Wolf offered her silent support, wishing there was more he could do. “Colonel Phillips is interrogating Zola. He'll have the location of the main base soon enough. We were hoping you could help us plan the attack.”  
  
Rogers was still for a long time. As still as Freedom and Liberty, not moving, barely breathing. Then, in unison, the bitches twitched their tails. Wolf felt them lean out as one and reconnect themselves into the pack-sense, reestablish themselves in the hierarchy as the queens of the Howling Commandos. Rogers frowned a little, possibly questioning the wolves next to his heels, then he nodded firmly.  
  
“Steve?”  
  
Leaving the bottle on the table, he stood up. Tall, straight and proud, jaw squared. One blood-spotted blue and a camouflage-mottled brown went up with him. “Let's walk right in the front door.”  
  
Wolf thought that was as good a plan as any.


End file.
